Reghu Thanumalayan of Deutsche Telekom Talks Hallo Magenta and Independent Voice Assistants – Voicebot Podcast Ep 148
You know about Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, and Google Assistant. What about the German alternative from Deutsche Telekom, Hallo Magenta? Reghu Thanumalayan, Innovation Lead for Deutsche Telekom’s Hallo Magenta Voice Assistant, is this week’s guest on Voicebot Podcast. He led the technology team that brought Magenta to market in 2019.
In case you missed the product launch in 2019, Hallo Magenta is the voice assistant and there is also a Magenta smart speaker. While most companies are simply creating Alexa skills and Google Actions that can operate on smart speakers from Amazon and Google, Deutsche Telekom decided to create its own end-to-end user experience. Reghu explains the value of being able to customize the user experience, enable use cases that the other voice platforms would not be able to support, and the benefit of owning the customer relationship and user data. He also discusses why Deutsche Telekom decided to also include Alexa as an option for users and there is even some insight into how Hallo Magenta is enabling others to build their own enterprise assistants.
The discussion is part of a wider trend around custom and regional voice assistants. Voicebot characterizes Hallo Magenta as both. It is regional in its focus on Germany where there are a limited number of options for German speakers, and it is custom in the depth of services Hallo Magenta provides, particularly around media and communications. Then, there is the added complexity of launching a hardware device to provide a fully functional service. Reghu shares a lot of learnings and where Magenta is headed.
Show Notes – Reghu Thanumalayan Interview Deutsche Telekom
- You can learn more about the Deutsche Telekom smart speaker here: Magenta Smart Speaker
- You can learn more about the journey to launch from Reghu on LinkedIn: Hallo Magenta, the Untold Story
- Learn more about Hallo Magenta: Germany Get its own Smart Speaker with Deutsche Telekom’s Magenta
- Learn about Magenta’s Use of Houndify: Deutsche Telekom and SoundHound Make Their Partnership Public
You can listen to the podcast interview above, on Google or Apple Podcasts or most of the leading podcast players.
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